PIPER AT THE GATES OF OLD MOOR
One of the hardest things any birder will ever do is correctly identify Gulls. Many of the different 'sea gull' species look incredibly similar, apart from during the years that they take to grow up and then they look incredibly different. It's a nightmare and big credit goes to anyone who claims to be an expert. Either that or they're great big fibbers. I know it's not a claim I would ever make.
For me, wading birds are similarly difficult to tell from one another. They're usually to be found on the muddy or silty bits where the water meets the land. That's where they find their food, by stuffing their beaks into the soft, wet ground. It's not an attractive living but somebody has to do it. These birds are mostly smaller than a blackbird and all of them have at least some brown and white feather markings. I'm a great fan of these creatures but they infuriate me as I'm terrible at telling them apart. And, just to annoy and delight me further, there are several of them in our Dearne Valley at the moment.
The easiest to spot and identify is probably the COMMON SANDPIPER, also known (by previous generations) as the Summer Snipe or the Lesser Tringa. They're mostly a light brown but the defining characteristic of these birds is that it looks like they have a big white 'C' for 'common' in the feathers around their shoulder and neck. Unless you're looking at them from the other side, then it's a mirror image. Identification is never simple.
A GREEN SANDPIPER has been hanging around Old Moor for a while now too. It looks like a monochrome version of the Common Sand but without the 'C'. So it's white underneath, black and grey on top. Why it's called 'green' is a complete mystery to me. Perhaps it's green with envy at the Common's big white 'C'.
There has been a WOOD SANDPIPER around the valley for much of the Summer too. It's quite like a Green Sandpiper in appearance but with a little more brown in its colouring. There's still no green though. To make distinction a little easier this chap has a rather fetching white eyebrow which spreads much further back along its head than that of tother Sandpiper species. It's only a relative thing but it might help you decide which you've seen.
Then of course we have the REDSHANK. This is probably the easiest of all waders to identify, especially if you know that 'shank' is an old-fashioned word meaning, 'leg'. So if you see a medium-sized wader with bright orange legs, this is what you've got. Let's not quibble over subtle variations in orange/red tones.
So if figures then that a GREENSHANK should be equally easy to pick out on the mere, right? Wrong. Whereas a Redshank's shanks are a vivid, bright red (or orange, if you pedantically prefer), there's nothing vivid or bright at all about a Greenshank. Its legs are the palest of dull green, if indeed you see any hint of emerald or lime at all. Personally I think they're usually more of a muddy grey. If you really want guidance on what tells them apart from other waders, then they have slightly longer legs than most and their beak turns up just the tiniest little bit at the end. That's all I've got to help you. I know. Difficult, isn't it.
And while we're in this area, even though we haven't had one around here for a while I should also mention the Spotted Redshank. No, it's not a normal Reddie with a sever case of teenage acne, it's a completely different species. In Winter it looks pretty much like a pale imitation of the common Redshank but when the hotter months come it develops lots of black spots which, in the height of breeding season, merge together so that its head, neck and upper parts appear almost totally black. It's a great-looking bird. But it's not here at the time of writing. Sorry.
We do have DUNLIN though. These are quite small waders with, thankfully, a very distinctive marking. They're mostly pale underneath with streaky chestnut above but their most striking part is that their stomachs turn a solid black colour in the breeding season. Imagine a dull little wader with a black ten-penny coin stapled to its belly. They're unmistakable, which is not something you can say very often about wading birds.
At the other end of the size scale, WHIMBREL, CURLEW and BLACK-TAIL GODWITS have also made appearances at Old Moor in the arid heat of the last few weeks. These are much bigger than your average wader and... well, let's come back to those in another blog on another day, shall we? I've got to leave you with something to look forwards to.
In the meantime, here's the sightings board.